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Fellow Wanderers

September 16, 2015 / Michele Minehart

No matter where I go, I constantly look for people I know.

While in Nashville with friends, we decided on boot scootin’ barbecue for lunch and partway through the meal an announcement came over the loudspeaker, “welcome to the Wingfield Society family reunion!” I stood up from my table and said, “these are my people! I’ll be right back.” I went to the balcony, introduced myself as a Wingfield and eventually conversed with my great Aunt.

This, among other incidences (like at the Portland airport) reinforce my small-town conditioned belief that I can always find someone I know. I’m constantly looking, even in the silliest places – like on vacation or in a mall in a different city. When I talk to new people, I seven-degrees us, trying to find mutual people from our paths.

Image by Christy Clements Beach, used with permission.

Knowing this about me, then, you’ll understand that upon opening the pages of Sarah Bessey’s new book, Out of Sorts, my heart felt at home. I had found My People. Though I’ve met Sarah only once, in an awe-struck teenager sort of way, I am now connected to over 200 people across several continents on this journey to sort through our faith as we know it. We’re highlighting favorite passages and “yes, me too!”-ing it into the wee hours on Facebook.

If you’ve been following along on this bloggy ride for a little while, you know I write about my faith often, and even more frequently, what it means for my life. As I’ve changed vocations and locations, I have noticed significant shifts in what I believe to be true, right and good. Most significantly, I read the Bible differently than I did 10 years ago. This is a welcome change, one that I hope you embrace in your own life. As Sarah says, if our theology doesn’t shift or change over our lifetimes, I have to wonder if we were paying attention.

This book has been a welcome, even timely oasis, one that welcomes sorting through what we’ve accumulated throughout our life experiences, discarding what isn’t needed and even re-purposing that which is but doesn’t seem to work in the same way. Often times we sort in solitude. We lie in wait with our questions, wondering if our uncertainties make us crazy or, even, not a Christian. The temptation is to hide silently in our suffering as the things which previously held up our faith shatter on the ground around us.

Instead, we need to move toward the rubble. Sarah writes, “the fear to engage with our evolution only worsens the pain.” The I-cannot-question-that Holy Grail is exactly the thing that needs to be picked up and moved around or we’ll never know what it can withstand. Jesus likened his words to the strong, steady foundation of a house, not the delicate etchings of a glass window. Those kind of things decorate, but you cannot build a house – or a faith – with them.

I’ve said before, three of the most powerful words we can use with someone is, “yes, me too.” It helps chase away the crazy – or, at least, normalizes it. There is just something to finding a friendly face, even a familiar one, as you trudge through challenges.

You can be 430 miles away from home, but when you hear over a loudspeaker that others with your heritage, your namesake, have arrived in the same place at the very same time, be reminded: you’re not lost. Just wandering.

Raising Nerds

September 11, 2015 / Michele Minehart

While at the lake, the young boys contemplated fun things to do that didn’t involve screens. Now one to contribute, my eldest offered, “I had math homework. That’s fun!”

Part of me is so very proud. This will put me in a top-notch nursing home someday. Upscale with organic applesauce and fair trade decaf coffee. Only the best and (most expensive) for this genius’ dear mama.

The honest part of me will say it scares me. If you’ve had a child, sibling or even a dog, I think you know the feeling. A sense of wondering, will he be included? As his mother, I love him in a particular and all-encompassing kind of way. I’m aware the rest of the world doesn’t have such thick ties – they’re free to love their favorite parts and tease about the rest, which is terrorizing.

We want our children to be loved and accepted. This is why we buy Under Armor, yes? Those little 10-year-old bodies don’t need power-wicking and compression. We’re buying a Sense of Enough because we desperately want them to be enough. To be included. Whether or not we had a place there, we want our kids to sit at the Cool Kids Table.

Except, I would argue, we actually don’t. We just think we do. Most of us don’t want to make cool the ultimate goal – it’s simply the most visible one. If other kids are flocking to your kid, then your kid must be someone good, right?

We mistake popularity for connection. I think perhaps when we say we hope for our children to be “included” what we really wish is for them to be known and loved for themselves. We want them to have friends who appreciate and honor them. We want them to feel the connection we have with our closest friends, families and partners. (Or that which we wish we had.)

The easiest and most readily-available solution is to help them become what is likable. There’s a profile out there (one, I would say, that is much more rigorous for young girls, but that is another post). Depending on your context you have to put in the ingredients for the right amount of brains (but not too nerdy), athleticism (in our parts, there’s never too much of this), good looks (but not to the point of vanity) and charm. When we succeed at this potion, society readily responds by asking other children seek out this prototype.

I absolutely love that I’m raising a little nerd. I think it’s cute and inspiring. I don’t want him to change – to love math less, to care if his clothes match more. But I do want him to be accepted. To be valued. True friends will do this, I know.

The easiest thing to do is ask him to be like everyone else. The risk of hurt and rejection seems slender when there’s less differentiation. As usual, I’m not in this for easy – I want the good. But I’ll be honest… living my values is hard, especially when my kid’s childhood is on the table. What if I’m wrong? What if these values aren’t worth it? What if the hurt he feels when he’s not popular leads him to other, less desirable ends?

I tell you folks, this parenting gig – it’s not for the faint of heart. Especially when you’re trying to change the world at the same time.

Why I Quit Math

August 29, 2015 / Michele Minehart

When my oldest was born, we had a brief (largely unnecessary, IMHO) stay at the NICU. When he was cleared of his most pressing concern, it took us a while to get out of the hospital. The nurses and doctors were measuring every diaper and what filled it. They were weighing him hourly (he was born a healthy weight). While the nurses could tell me that he wasn’t hungry because he was content, sleeping, not fussing, the protocol said to measure, measure, measure. I left convinced that the hospital community would measure anything that could be attached to a number.

I’m not saying all metrics are a bad thing – far from it. My friend E has convinced me that there is a level of accountability available through our number games that must exist for the well-being of all people. But take a quick look at our society and you see us math-ing all the time. Calories burned & consumed. Test scores. Profit margin. Miles logged.

Not long ago a professional athlete posted his disdain for participation trophies. While I also think paying for little trinkets of shiny plastic is a tad silly (another post, another time), his comments revealed the ethos of our culture: We’re addicted to outcomes. We need to know how we measure up. Where do we fall in the bell curve? If I’m not Top Dog, how close am I and did enough people fall below me that I’m still in the upper tier?

If you’re running a business or a professional sports team, this is perhaps a helpful inquiry. But do you know where it doesn’t compute?

Worthiness.

Let me be clear my friends: in all my study, all my understanding of Scripture, all my time pondering the ways of God, it has never once come up that God takes all of humankind, lines them up according to salary, athletic prowess, months they successfully breastfed, BMI, or GPA. And if He did decide to rank us according to an asinine category, he certainly wouldn’t take only the top third with him to the pearly gates.

God doesn’t parcel out his love to the top performers. He does not hold a draft and there are no tryouts. If you want in, you’re in. If you want a fun little weekend project, read the gospels (or pick your favorite) and start counting the number of times the failures, the not-enoughs make it into Jesus’ roster. This isn’t just Good News that your imperfections don’t count against you – it’s Good News that you can stop comparing your best efforts to everyone else’s.

You don’t have to watch what everyone else is doing to know you’re worthy of love.

If you’d like another fun little reading project, start digging into the New Testament and make tally marks when you come across phrases like “what matters is something far more interior: faith expressed in love.” (Ephesians 5:6, MSG) or “Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.” (I John 4:16).

So just stop. Stop adding. Stop averaging. If you want to become better at something because it makes your life better, than by all means – do it. Live life fully and stop half-assing what is important to you. The girl that keeps a Life Plan with 100 Year Goals will tell you there’s nothing wrong from wanting to extract every opportunity from this one blessed lifetime. But don’t use your improvement metrics as an argument to why you are loved, by others or by God. God doesn’t do a lot of math.

True love is attached to who you are, not what you’ve achieved. If you try to put love on a curve, remember that no one aced the test and we’re all getting a little boost in our performance. You cannot line up love from greatest to smallest, but if you try, remember that God is always partial to the least and last.

So may you stop adding and averaging your accomplishments as a means to feel worthy. May you sink your efforts and energies into loving and living well.

“Since this is the kind of life we have chose, the life of the Spirit, let us make sure that we do not just hold it as an idea in our heads or a sentiment in our hearts, but work out its implications in every detail of our lives. That means we will not compare ourselves with each other as if one of us were better and another worse. We have far more interesting things to do with our lives. Each of us is an original.”

-Galatians 6:25-26

*This post was strongly influenced by Brene Brown’s book Daring Greatly and the chapter on Scarcity. Read it.

Michele Minehart

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Fellow Wanderers

Raising Nerds

Why I Quit Math

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